Years of futility for franchise and thrifty owner

Arizona Cardinals head coach Ken Whisenhunt, left, gets off the plane with owner William V. Bidwill, center, and president Michael J. Bidwill as the team arrives at the Tampa International Airport for Super Bowl XLIII NFL football game on Monday, Jan. 26, 2009, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Ross D. Fra

/ AP

Arizona Cardinals head coach Ken Whisenhunt, left, gets off the plane with owner William V. Bidwill, center, and president Michael J. Bidwill as the team arrives at the Tampa International Airport for Super Bowl XLIII NFL football game on Monday, Jan. 26, 2009, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Arizona Cardinals head coach Ken Whisenhunt, left, gets off the plane with owner William V. Bidwill, center, and president Michael J. Bidwill as the team arrives at the Tampa International Airport for Super Bowl XLIII NFL football game on Monday, Jan. 26, 2009, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin) (/ AP)

TIM DAHLBERG, The Associated Press

Bill Bidwill didn't seem terribly comfortable, which by itself was hardly a surprise.

Going to the Super Bowl for some owners is a routine thing. For the 77-year-old Bidwill, it literally could be a once-in-a-lifetime event.

"Well," the Arizona Cardinals owner said in the understatement of the week, "we're here."

Here has been a long time coming for the ever-thrifty Bidwill, whose teams set the bar for futility in two different cities. For years, the thought of a Bidwill team going to the Super Bowl was about as laughable as the NFL allowing its networks to televise the game for free.

In 61 years before this one, the team owned by his family won one playoff game. In their 21 years since moving to Arizona, the team had only one winning season before now.

Players hated him because he wouldn't pay big money. Fans despised him because he wouldn't do what was necessary to bring in a winner.

But there Bidwill was on Super Bowl media day at Raymond James stadium, talking about how he never once thought about giving it all up.

"It never crossed my mind," Bidwill said. "I love the business, I'm accustomed to it. I don't let it get to me if we have a bad game or a bad year. I just go back into it and try to get better."

Bidwill may have been trying, but his Cardinals rarely got better.

The team was lousy in St. Louis, pitiful in Arizona, and a joke around the NFL. As the years went by, it seemed Bidwill's major accomplishment in football would end up being his stint as a water boy on the Chicago Cardinal team that won the NFL title in 1947.

"They weren't all lean years," Bidwill insisted, showing the kind of optimism his team's fans never shared. "Some years were spectacular. We either led the eastern conference or were tied a number of times. We had a very good football team, scored a lot of points and so we did win some division titles."

True, there was that 1999 playoff win against the Dallas Cowboys that provided some false hope. Mostly, though, the Cardinals franchise has been about as barren as the ring of honor at the team's stadium that lists Bidwill, the late Pat Tillman and a few players fans would be hard-pressed to remember.

But now the quiet owner and his perennially lousy team are in the Super Bowl, an accomplishment that would be celebrated even more if the Cardinals didn't have to play a team that has won five of them already. While Bidwill's franchise exemplified the worst of the NFL for decades, the Pittsburgh Steelers have been the consistent model the league would like all of its teams to follow.

The contrast on the field is just as striking as that in the owner's box. Though both have been family-run operations for decades, the similarities begin and end there.

That was clear at media day, where Bidwill seemed uncomfortable and left after just a few minutes of answering questions. An hour later, Steelers owner Dan Rooney stood on the sidelines and talked to journalists, players and almost anyone else who came by.

Rooney is the elder statesman of the NFL, the unassuming leader of a blue-collar team and so influential in league circles that he has a hiring rule named after him. The stability of his family franchise is so important to the NFL that commissioner Roger Goodell personally stepped in a few months ago to make sure Rooney could buy out enough of the shares of his four brothers to keep the team in the family even while outside bidders were offering more money.

While Bidwill seems uneasy talking to his players, Rooney revels in the camaraderie of a team. He'll talk to a practice squad player the same way he talks to his stars, often asking them about their families or their personal problems.

"They are a great organization and a great group of people," Steelers linebacker James Farrior said. "You like playing for this team."

Players on the Cardinals didn't quite go that far on behalf of their owner, allowing only that it would be nice for the Bidwills to win a championship. Bidwill's son, Michael, a former federal prosecutor, now makes most of the decisions for the team and was instrumental in getting a new stadium built in Glendale, Ariz., that allowed the pursestrings to be loosened enough to give receiver Larry Fitzgerald a deal worth $40 million over four years.

Old habits are harder to break for his dad, though. His franchise is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but he still watches every penny.

Asked what he did to celebrate the NFC championship win that put his team in the Super Bowl, Bidwill said he went home and put some leftover coffee in the microwave and had a cup.